New technologies for urban designers: the VENUE project

In this report, we first outline the basic idea of VENUE. This involves developing digital tools froma foundation of geographic information systems (GIS) software which we then apply to urbandesign, a subject area and profession which has little tradition in using such tools. Our project wasto develop two types of tool, namely functional analysis based on embedding models of movementin local environments into GIS based on ideas from the field of space syntax; and secondlyfashioning these ideas in a wider digital context in which the entire range of GIS technologies werebrought to bear at the local scale. By local scale, we mean the representation of urban environmentsfrom about 1: 500 to around 1: 2500

Tissue-Specific Transcriptomes Reveal Gene Expression Trajectories in Two Maturing Skin Epithelial Layers in Zebrafish Embryos.

Epithelial cells are the building blocks of many organs, including skin. The vertebrate skin initially consists of two epithelial layers, the outer periderm and inner basal cell layers, which have distinct properties, functions, and fates. The embryonic periderm ultimately disappears during development, whereas basal cells proliferate to form the mature, stratified epidermis. Although much is known about mechanisms of homeostasis in mature skin, relatively little is known about the two cell types in pre-stratification skin. To define the similarities and distinctions between periderm and basal skin epithelial cells, we purified them from zebrafish at early development stages and deeply profiled their gene expression. These analyses identified groups of genes whose tissue enrichment changed at each stage, defining gene flow dynamics of maturing vertebrate epithelia. At each of 52 and 72 hr post-fertilization (hpf), more than 60% of genes enriched in skin cells were similarly expressed in both layers, indicating that they were common epithelial genes, but many others were enriched in one layer or the other. Both expected and novel genes were enriched in periderm and basal cell layers. Genes encoding extracellular matrix, junctional, cytoskeletal, and signaling proteins were prominent among those distinguishing the two epithelial cell types. In situ hybridization and BAC transgenes confirmed our expression data and provided new tools to study zebrafish skin. Collectively, these data provide a resource for studying common and distinguishing features of maturing epithelia

An integrative approach to space-flight physiology using systems analysis and mathematical simulation

An approach was developed to aid in the integration of many of the biomedical findings of space flight, using systems analysis. The mathematical tools used in accomplishing this task include an automated data base, a biostatistical and data analysis system, and a wide variety of mathematical simulation models of physiological systems. A keystone of this effort was the evaluation of physiological hypotheses using the simulation models and the prediction of the consequences of these hypotheses on many physiological quantities, some of which were not amenable to direct measurement. This approach led to improvements in the model, refinements of the hypotheses, a tentative integrated hypothesis for adaptation to weightlessness, and specific recommendations for new flight experiments